Richard Brand: All Those Other People


One of the realities of elections is that you only vote for a few people, but what you get is a whole lot more people. That is, when you vote for the President and Vice-President, you get all those cabinet secretaries, advisers, experts, appointments and staff people. It is not just Obama and Biden, it is his whole staff. It is not just Romney and Ryan, it is all the people they would bring with them.

That is a great part of what worries me the most. That is why I am so opposed to Romney and Ryan.  It is very obvious that Romney and Ryan come with the same economic advisers and experts who advised and guided Reagan and Bush. Those advisers are responsible for the “trickle down” theory of economics which have not worked for either of those Presidents. The national debt doubled as percentage of the Gross National Product under those advisers and economist. Their ideas did not work then and I am not convinced those economic ideas will work now.

But even more troublesome is that the same advisers who were advising President Bush on the Middle East, the same experts in Foreign affairs, the same security authorities who gave counsel to President Bush about how to conduct affairs in the Middle East are the same advisers who are a part of Romney’s and Ryan’s team.

These are the experts who were sure that there were weapons of mass destruction. These were the same advisers who were convinced that taking out Saddam Huessin would be a great step forward for our relationships in the Middle East. These are the same think tank people who encouraged “preemptive wars”, the first offensive wars this country has undertaken, and who never managed to develop a plan of what to be done after we took out Huessin.  These are the advisers who ended up getting us into two major wars which we are still fighting and never even suggested that there ought to be taxes increased to pay for the wars. So those wars were added to the debt.

I have been terribly disappointed that Obama has not ended the war in Iraq more quickly. It was one of his promises and we are still there. He has set a deadline for coming home, but apparently it is much harder to end a war than it is to start one. We get all that equipment and people over there and it is hard to turn around and bring it back home. Especially after all the rubble that has been created by all the bombings and conflicts. You feel kind of guilty going over there and creating a war and then just up and leaving them to clean up.

Because it appears to be so hard to end a war, we do not need to have those same advisers giving guidance to Romney on Iran and Syria, on affairs in the middle east. As the new Egyptian President said it is now time for the United States to develop new partnership relationships with the countries of the Arab Spring. The old advisers of Bush who are now advising Romney still are not ready to become partners with those emerging nations.  At least, not if what Romney has said about Iran and Syria are any indication.

Obama and his people have made major improvements in our international relationships.